


Old Wounds

by Dom_Avner



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 14:31:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11083545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dom_Avner/pseuds/Dom_Avner
Summary: The thoughts of Maul before, during and after his final confrontation with Obi-Wan Kenobi (I know I'm late with this one, I just recently found it on my PC).





	Old Wounds

"The truth is often only what we make of it, you heard what you wanted to hear, you believed what you wanted to believe, and now is the only one who has gained anything from all of this is ..." "Me" Said Maul, stepping to the fire.  
At last, after having wandered for days through this goddamn desert, he had found him. His plan to use the young pupil to lure Kenobi had worked. 'The first in a long time,' he thought.  
In his eyes, hatred reflected again, old hatred, but also pain over a lost fate. It was hard for the Zabrak to hold back, now, that he was so near his goal.  
Kenobi and Bridger straightened up. The young student immediately took his light sword, but the old man held him back. "You must go now," he said calm. 'Too calm.'  
Bridger, however, did not want to leave. "I led him to you, let me make it right." 'Always so eager to fix his mistakes,' thought Maul, inwardly amused. The boy reminded him of himself when he was younger when he was still a student of Sidious. Again, cold anger gripped him. Palpatine was out of reach, but Kenobi was not.  
"This is not your responsibility, I will mend this old wound." The Jedi spoke of healing, but there was no cure left for Maul. He had already lost all he could lose, except for his life. 'But, as usual, the Jedi always believe in the good in living creatures.'  
"Ride north, that is your way out. Your way home." The Zabrak did not know what Kenobi had said to him before he came. Probably it was some Jedi wisdom.  
It was hard for the boy to leave. But he did. The animal grunted as he moved. Maul called after him and the droid: "See you soon, apprentice!"  
Then he turned to Kenobi and sighed. "Look what has become of you, a rat in the desert," he said, full of hatred and hate. But the Jedi merely replied, "Look what I have risen above."  
Maul was hardly surprised by this answer. The Jedi had always been too fine for feelings like revenge, and Kenobi had always been one of the worst.  
"I've come to kill you, but perhaps it's worse to just leave you here, festering in your squalor" he said as he walked around the camp fire on Kenobi.  
He could not get out of his way. "If you define yourself by your power to take life, your desire to dominate, to posess, then you have nothing." Maul had enough. He had enough of those eternal lectures that sounded as if they were directly from the Jedi Code. Somehow he missed the 'old' Kenobi. He had fought at least.  
An angry growl escaped the Zabrak's throat when he pulled his sword from the stick. "And what do you have?" He hissed as he swirled sand with the crimson blade that extinguished the fire.  
The two enemies stood facing each other, illuminated by the light of the stars and the blade of Maul. Maul was ready to fight, and yet ... one thing left him no rest.  
"Why come to this place?" asked he. "Not simply to hide." The face of his counterpart showed no emotion, but Maul understood this too. "Oh, you have a purpose here. Perhaps you are protecting something?"  
There! A small hardening in Kenobi's face, barely noticeable, but he had seen it. Now he recognized his mistake. "No. Protecting someone."  
The face expression of his arch enemy hardened further. And now - at last - he too drew his sword. 'Now I have him', thought Maul, 'now it begins.'

Kenobi went into the classic Soresu starting position, the sword in the right, the left hand empty and stretched forward, with his forefinger and middle finger protruding, his old trademark. In response, the Zabrak activated his second blade and whirled the stolen weapon through the air.  
When he finally put the second hand on the handle, Kenobi changed his position. He went into the Ataru starting position, both hands on the handle, a fighting style that Maul had not seen in him for years. Both looked at each other, their faces like stone.  
The Zabrak took a few short steps forward, experimentally, to see how Kenobi responded. He however did not move from the spot, only took his sword closer to his body. They looked at each other. It seemed to Maul like an eternity that they stood there, under the stars Tatooines.  
With a scream, he finally jumped forward, trying to ram his sword into Kenobi's pool. But he blocked the blade upwards. When Maul tried to hit his opponent's neck with the second, he hit the lower one.  
In his despair, Maul grabbed an old trick, one who had worked on Naboo against Kenobi's master. He tore the sword up, trying to hit Kenobi with hiss grip in the face. But he was prepared. He lifted the sword and lowered it from above, breaking Maul's sword in the middle, and the Zabrak paused.  
He himself did not know what had happened and had caused him stopped. Kenobi's face showed no emotion. But then the pain finaly came, and Maul realized that his opponent, his arch enemy, had cut his chest with the sword. He looked down at himself, saw the smoldering wound, and his powers left him.  
Maul fell to the ground, the two sword halves fell from his hands. But instead of the hard, hot sand he landed in something ... soft, warm. Kenobi had caught him, the dying enemy. And when they saw each other in the face, Maul saw something in the face of his counterpart that he had never expected from him. Grief.

In that moment the dying Zabrak realised several things. Kenobi did not want to fight him, not because he had feared him, but because he had realized how meaningless this whole hunt had become. They had lost all that had meant to them, Maul his brother, his master (who had broken him), his mother, and all the power he had ever built, and Kenobi his order, his great love, and his best Friend.  
Maul regretted that it had come so far that he had to die here, in the arms of his arch enemy. If he had turned to a greater things, if he had not let himself be guided by his hatred for Kenobi, he could have been in Vader's place.  
But he also recognized that Kenobi was not the key to victory over the Sith, but the boy. The boy from the visions of the Holocron, who Maul had dismissed as unimportant, was being the reason why Kenobi - Obi-Wan - was here. But he needed to know.  
With the little breath he had left, he asked in a broken voice, "Tell me, is he the chosen one?" And Kenobi answered, "He is."  
That was it. He did not need a name, nothing. It was enough for him to know that Sidious, Vader and their accursed empire would fall. He would not see it anyway.  
In his last breath, he brought out a last sentence: "He will ... avenge us." And with this sentence he meant not only his family, but also all those who had lost Obi-Wan, and possibly Obi-Wan himself.  
Maul's head fell backwards, the golden eyes glancing up into the sky, but they saw neither the hand that closed them forever, nor how Obi-Wan Kenobi squeezed the body of his dead enemy and shed tears about him.  
Maul, the last son of Dathomir, was dead.


End file.
